This intensive course of self-preparation has one drawback. None of the things described in the books ever happen at the school to which we are ultimately sent. We have plenty of surprises, plenty of rough experiences; but none quite of the kind anticipated. American soldiers, arriving on the Western Front in the fourth year of the War, feel themselves in very much the same position as the self-conscious adventurer described above. Ever since—in some cases, before—our country came in, we have been schooling ourselves for the day when we should find ourselves Over Here, among veteran soldiers. Methods have varied, of course. Some of us have followed every turn of the operations in official summaries and technical articles. To such, the War has been a glorified game, we will say, of scientific football. Others—Miss Sissy Smithers, for instance—have educated themselves upon more popular lines—from the Sunday newspapers, or illustrated magazines of the domestic variety, in which healthy patriotism and “heart interest” are not fettered by any petty considerations of technical possibility. Over here, Disillusionment awaits both these enthusiasts. The student of tactics soon realizes the difference between fighting a battle in imagination and in reality. Imagination cannot bring home to any human brain the extent to which the chess-board dispositions of modern strategy are tempered by the actualities of modern fighting—in other words, by the strain upon the human machine. All the five senses are affected—hearing, by the appalling din; seeing, by the spectacle of a whole group of human beings blown to shreds; smelling, by the reek of gas and explosives; touching, by the feel of dead men’s faces everywhere under your hand in the darkness; and tasting, by the unforgettable flavour of meat in the mouth after forty-eight hours’ continuous fighting in an atmosphere of human blood. The War is going to be won, not by the strategists, but by the man who can endure these things most steadfastly. Miss Sissy Smithers need not be taken so seriously. He may be disappointed at first to find that Red Cross nurses follow their calling in Base Hospitals and not in No Man’s Land; and that performing dogs, loaded with secret despatches and medical comforts, are not such a prominent feature of modern warfare as the lady novelist would have us believe. But no enterprise, however grim, was ever the worse for a touch of glamour. Sissy will soon settle down. Still, we have come to school knowing more than most new boys—far more, indeed, than our seasoned French and British companions knew when they embarked upon their martial education. The American soldier takes the field to-day, thanks to the recorded experiences of others, with a serviceable knowledge of the routine of trench warfare. Gas is no surprise to him, and he is familiar with the tactical handling of bombs, machine guns, and trench-mortars.